Unemployment data to be ready in 3 months – Nana Addo

President Akufo-Addo has said that the government will provide accurate statistics on the country’s unemployment statistics within the next three months.

He said the government cannot currently provide comprehensive information on its labor statistics despite claims his government has created some jobs, and is in the process of adding more.

The New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the run-up to the 2016 elections, campaigned among other things on the back of its drive to ensure massive employment. It argued that the John Mahama administration did very little to improve the unemployment situation, and also accused it of lying about the number of jobs that it said it had created.

However, after over 12 months in office, the government is unable to indicate the number of jobs it has actually created.

Reacting to a question about the number of jobs the government had created at the second media encounter at the Flagstaff House on Wednesday, President Akufo-Addo said, “the statistics on the jobs…. I am barely one year in office. Some of these statistics are being collected as we speak now so the labour statistics as to the number of jobs that have been created, those are not statistics that are at hand anywhere. Even for the government, I believe that they are in the process of being assembled, so perhaps in 2 or 3 months, we will be in a better position to answer that question in a more effective manner.”

Meanwhile, a Deputy Minister for Finance, Kwaku Kwarteng, has suggested that the country does not have statistics on its labour because its economy is largely informal.

Speaking on the Citi Breakfast Show on Thursday, Mr. Kwarteng said existing data used by the government are from sources including the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT), and the Ghana Statistical Service, although they are not exactly accurate.

He however stressed that, when the National Identification system becomes fully operational, it will help the government accurately determine the labor dynamics in the country.

“It is wrong to say that because of all these inadequacies, the government is not in the position to design policies to improve the unemployment situation. The strategies to know accurately how many are employed and what kind of employment they are looking for is not something we can do overnight and we cannot wait to do all that before we design policies,” he said.